VintageAR XV1075-Lancer

After a decade of Martian racing, the "Craterpuck" from Marauder Aerobodies had had a rich and storied past, including a Le Mars win in 2089. The last of the XV1000s, the Lancer model number XV1075A was immediately rejected for competition by the FCAI sanctioning body for it's experimental anti-gravity pylons and "unstable" plasma induced thruster arrays. After six months of brutal legal wranglings over the ruling and unprintable courtroom outbursts by every Lancer team member, Marauder Aerobodies Inc. was given a one year ban from all FCAI events. Relegated to unsanctioned races and illegal cross-Martian canonballs, the Lancer beat all comers in its first outing at the 2099 Lambda 3 Endurance Race, finishing one hour and fifty-seven minutes ahead of all other participants. After a time-draining mechanical failure at the start of the next race, the Lancer still managed to make up enough ground to finish second, just eight minutes behind the winner Joshil "The Beast" Traker. The Lancer's third race was its last. In the lead, about 1000 km into the 2099 Coke/PNC Anti-Gravity Challenge, without warning the Lancer veered ridiculously off-course, collided with a taco truck and disintegrated in a boiling hot explosion of plasma and cilantro. The crash took the life of Lancer pilot Capt. Idle Parneet and an estimated forty-seven other people, including taco truck owner Jerry-Kim Bathory. The taco truck also disintegrated. Rumors persist to this day that the ill-fated Lancer was sabotaged in retaliation to the Martian Miner Revolt of 2098, as the owner of Marauder Aerobodies, Malcomn Colomb Sr., was a vocal Miner's Union advocate and rabble rouser. Other rumors claim it was a simple miscalculation. The 128 year old team owner and mechanic was quite senile at the time of the Lancer's production and insisted on working in private with only hand selected robot assistants. No official cause was ever found for the accident. The local Martian Authority spokesperson stated at the investigation's closing, "It is difficult to dust a molten pool of plasma for prints." Families were quietly paid off and any official records have been lost to corrupted holographs and hacker slams. In 2100, the great grandchildren of the Colomb family literally wrestled company control from their infirmed grandfather and introduced the radically redesigned Marauder Aerobodies XV2100 model. Malcomn Colomb Sr.'s famous last words were, "This is not my Lancer!" heard over the radio of a stolen slurry tug just before he drove it over the edge of Tester's Canyon in 2102. Which is why it is now popular to say "That's not my Lancer!" when something goes wrong on Taco Tuesdays.

Excerpt from "The Odd History of Martian Anti-Gravity Racers"
by Candel Io Ferdnerst

Sketchup, Photoshop and Illustrator
I've been trying to develop my skills in Sketchup (dynamic components, styles, etc.) and used this model to experiment. I've also wanted to do a cross section of one of these racers for a while, so I did it with a copy of the model I created of the old XV1025D Craterpuck.